What a week!!! Glad to be starting a new one, especially one with such amazing weather!
Last week was long and gross. It rained almost non-stop and made having vertigo even worse. But I'm all better now; feeling great! But it took a couple of days to bounce back, especially considering what happened on Friday...
After 5 years of post-secondary education, I've seen it all in terms of exams. They no longer scare me. But nothing prepared me for a complete loss of control over my exam environment. Normally, my psyc class is in a large lecture theatre. We have about 90 people in the class, so when we were moved next door into a room 1/3 the size (we got bumped for ESL testing), let's just say that it was a little cramped. At first I didn't have anyone on either side of me but a guy came in 5 minutes after the exam started and sat on my left. It was really warm in the room (opposite what it normally is) and I felt like everyone was squished in around me. So when this guy sits down beside me, I start to feel really claustrophobic. And then he starts coughing... very loudly. And then I can hear people moving things really loudly out in the hall across the tiled floors in Langara's halls.
And then the guy keeps coughing! By this point, I'm getting really agitated and have looked at 6 questions but only answered 2. I can feel myself getting panicky and am trying to tell myself to relax and breathe and just focus on the test. But how can I when Mr. Coughs A Lot won't shut up? I'm almost ready to offer him my water at this point glance. But I keep getting more agitated. Before I know it, I'm in a full blown, massive panic attack. My heart is racing, I can barely catch my breath and I'm almost in tears. I look up in front of me and Ross (my instructor) catches my eye and asks if I'm all right. I shake my head and tell him I can't concentrate. The guy next to me muttered 'sorry'. Ross came over and knelt beside me and told me that it was okay to take a break and that if I needed to reschedule that would be fine.
So I grabbed my water bottle and hurried out of the class, just managing to hold back the tears until I got into the hall. Then I lost it. I ended up going to Disability Services to see Patsy. I have to say that I love Patsy. She is so lovely to talk to and very helpful, so it's no wonder that I sought her out. She was with a student briefly, so I paced outside her door. When it was my turn, I walked into her office. She took one look at me and went for the Kleenex box. But I was starting to calm down by this point (all that pacing), so I just sat in the chair at her desk and told her what happened. She suggested not going back and torturing myself when it probably wouldn't do me any good. So we rescheduled for 9am this morning.
I went in this morning a little early and wrote the exam in half an hour! It wasn't nearly as hard as people had complained about. I can't believe I let them psych me out (no pun intended)! I think I aced it, but I guess we'll see on Friday when we get our results.
Suffice to say, Friday was intense for me. But I walked home, had dinner (Ryan cooked) and then we went to see Reign Over Me. OMG! What a fantastic movie! But really intense, so I was a bit of a wreck by the time we got home. And Adam Sandler... can anyone say Oscar?
As for the rest of my weekend, I finally got to buy something that I have been waiting a long time for... a lovely, beautiful Pentax digital SLR camera... but I'll tell you more about that later, since I have drawing homework to do for tomorrow...
No comments:
Post a Comment